Eric Wright Facilities Management has been awarded a contract to service 16 PFI fire stations across the North West over the next 18 years.

The team, based at the Eric Wright Group headquarters in Bamber Bridge, Lancashire, has been appointed as a subcontractor by ENGIE Services and Balfour Beatty under the partnership’s PFI arrangement.

EWFM will service stations located across Lancashire, Cumbria and the Liverpool city region, all of which have been designed, built, financed and are operated by Balfour Beatty Investments. The fire stations range in size from a single appliance fire station to multi-appliance stations with additional garaging for special equipment. Some of the sites also include training facilities and office space.

As part of the contract EWFM will deliver a range of services which include both hard and soft FM services including service desk operation, statutory compliance, planned and reactive maintenance, energy management, grounds maintenance, vending, cleaning and janitorial services.

The Eric Wright team has also transferred, under TUPE regulations, seven team members including a technical services supervisor, engineers and caretaker from ENGIE into EWFM as well as 18 staff to cleaning sub-contractor Future Cleaning Services.

Kate Bailey, senior business development manager for EWFM, said: “Providing facilities management to the emergency services sector is an exciting new challenge for us and, together with the education and healthcare markets, we see it as a significant future growth area for the business.

“To be appointed on our largest contract to date in this area over an 18-year period is testament to the knowledge and skills we have in our team.”

Eric Wright Group set up the FM division in 2002 and it now delivers services to Lancashire County Council, Cheshire West & Chester Council, Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Manchester College, Bilfinger Industrial Automation Services and One Partnership, a public–private partnership which connects health, social care and housing.